Level Orange

When looking for work late last year, I recently got in touch with a former employer of mine, Bob Lamons, and we discussed building out a site for his new B2B marketing venture, Industribrand (as in “industry brand”). Now, I’d worked for Bob for nearly six years at his ad agency, Robert Lamons & Associates and when that operation closed its doors, I moved on to publishing for several years. Still, I jumped at the chance to both rebuild a working relationship with Bob as well as flex some more of my skills in web design. As I’m sure often happens in the design industry, I was once again working for a former employer, albeit in a slightly different capacity.

Back in 1998 or so, I’d built the RL&A site (ads2biz.com) entirely by hand, one page at a time. Eventually, I retooled the site using one of the early versions of Movable Type mostly out of a need to make adding and editing content a breeze. Similarly, the Industribrand site would need to be just as easy to use, while still being powerful and flexible. Enter WordPress.

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It’s been nearly ten years(!) since I really dabbled in creating typefaces, but I’ve finally added some more to the type page, including Hospital, Sartori and TranScript.

Be sure to read over the full descriptions and licensing details for the fonts if you’d like to use them for a project. Enjoy!

Design firm Turner Duckworth announced today that its work on the packaging for the latest Metallica album “Death Magnetic” has been nominated for a Grammy award. Yes, a Grammy. For packaging. Turner Duckworth, known for its work with Coca-Cola and Motorola, made some unconventional design choices in the face of traditional music packaging, including the ambiguous/not-so-ambiguous cover image and a rather intrusive die-cut that pays no mind to photos or text in the liner notes.  

I’m not sure what’s more surprising for me; the fact that Metallica is still bothering to put out music or that they turned to a design firm to build and market their “brand” or that there’s even a Grammy award for packaging design. Anyone recall who won last year or the year before that?

GET TO WORK.

That’s right. If you have work to do and are super-concerned about getting it done, that’s the only practical piece of advice I can offer.

Lately, I’ve been catching up with sites that claim to offer tips and tricks to stay productive and make your workload a bit easier and less stressful. You know, the kind of stuff that falls into the Getting Things Done mantra (you do know GTD, don’t you?). Sites like Merlin Mann’s 43Folders provide some excellent insights and perspective on what it means to be a responsible, highly-productive worker. Designer types like myself can go to Fuel Your Creativity or Smashing Magazine and find out how to get better at this or easier ways to do that. The tech-savvy can hop over to LifeHacker or TechieBuzz and find all kinds of ways to get the most out of their computers and technology.

These sites offer some really great advice and can be a big help whenever you’re in a pinch, but it seems like everyone’s got tips on how to do stuff. Even when I try to skim my way through a lot of it, I’ve found myself more enthralled by reading about how to be productive than actually being productive.

And so that’s where my three magic words come into play. I still like to find ways to make my computer faster or some nifty Photoshop tutorials as much as the next guy, but as far as getting things done, I come from the school of “Don’t talk about it. Be about it.” So the next time you find yourself being not-so-productive, try not to look to others for ways to do your work. Just get to work. You pansy. You’re welcome.

Great roundup of some of the most-watched designers in the web design community. Zeldman, Cederholm, Moll, Budd, Meyer…I’ve been personally following some of these folks for years, as they often have great insights and opinion on where web design and principles. If you do any work that’s even remotely design-related, you should read up on what these guys (no ladies?) are doing. LINK